How To Recover Deleted Google Chrome History

Google Chrome, undoubtedly hails as one of the most preferred browsers for browsing the web. For someone who surfs the web day in and out, Chrome History is an important place. For instance, recently there was a website that I visited some days back for the range of products, its magnificent design, and its extensive guides related to those products.

Fast forward a few days later – I again wanted to get back to the same website, but couldn’t remember the name. On my first visit, I had even forgotten to bookmark it. Thankfully, I knew exactly the date when I visited it. And, bingo! I found it on that date.

But that being said, not everyone is as lucky as I am. In a fit of a hurry, people often delete their Chrome history and mistakenly lose track of important websites. So, if that’s you, today’s your lucky day, because in this post we’ll discuss some ways in which you can recover deleted Google Chrome History (Or, at least keep the hopes alive!)

Before We Get Down To Ways On How To Recover Deleted Google Chrome History, Back It Up –

Now that you are aware that you might at some point delete important websites from Google History, why not take a backup instead? In this method, we are going to tell you how you can backup and restore entire settings which also includes your Google Chrome History even without a Google Account  –

1. Press Windows + R to open the Run dialog box.
2. Type %appdata% and hit the Enter
3. In the address bar copy this path – C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome

Here replace the Admin with your username. For e.g. if the username is “John”, the path will be C:\Users\John\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome

4. Copy the User Data If you don’t want to copy all the components of this folder, you can only copy the Defaultfolder inside the User Data folder. For specifically restoring History, click open Default and copy the History file as shown in the screenshot below –

5. Paste it on an external hard drive or a shared drive, wherever it is that you are backing up your data.
6. Considering that you have deleted websites from your Google Chrome history, copy the folder or Historyas we mentioned above, head to the same C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome folder, and paste it there. If it is just the history that you want to restore, paste it in Default.
7. If you receive Replace the files in the destination, click on it.
8. Once that’s done, open Google Chrome, click on the three vertical dots from the top-right corner of the screen, and head to History or simply press Ctrl + H to open History.  You will find your History.

Ways To Recover Deleted History In Google Chrome

Assuming you didn’t take a backup, then is there any way in which you can recover deleted history in Google Chrome? Yes, there is and below we have discussed a few such ways –

1. Check Your Google Account Activity

Even if you have deleted certain websites from the Google Chrome History, chances are that they will still appear in your Google Activity. From there you can recover your Google Chrome History and here are the steps to do that –

1. Open Google Chrome and head to google.com.

2. Make sure that you are logged into the account whose history you want to find. You can check that by seeing the upper-right corner of the screen. If you aren’t signed in you will not see any history.

3. Here you can scroll through the entire history or filter out history based on a specific time.
4. Click open websites whose history you had accidentally deleted and they’ll again appear in your Chrome history.

2. Use A Data Recovery Tool

As we can see that the Google Chrome history is saved on a location on your hard drive. So, the first thing that we want you to do is to take note of this path – C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome

Now, download a data recovery software like Advanced Disk Recovery which is one of the best and easy to-use data recovery tools for Windows. To know more about its features and other aspects, you can check out review of Advanced Disk Recovery.

Here is how you can recover deleted Google Chrome history using this data recovery software –

1. Download, install and run Advanced Disk Recovery. We suggest that you copy the path mentioned above on a notepad or sticky notes or elsewhere.
2. As you can see the Chrome history is located in the C: So, when the software opens, select Hard Driveand C: as shown in the screenshot below –

3. Click on the Start Scan Now.

4. Select Deep Scan since this mode helps conduct a detailed sector-wide scanning of the hard disk and click on Scan now.

5. Wait for the scan to get over.
6. Now refer to the path C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Defaultand we’ll use this as a folder structure in Advanced Disk Recovery as can be seen in the screenshot below –
7. Click on the checkmark next to Default and click on Recover.

3. Take the Help of DNS Cache

Your DNS Cache stores all the information about the websites you have visited. It does this so that it is easier for you to visit them later. However, the surety level of this method is not very high since each time you restart your computer, the cache is wiped off. Still, there is no harm in trying to restore deleted Google Chrome History via DNS cache –

1. In the Windows search bar type CMD.
2. Select Run as administrator from the right-hand side.

3. When the Command Prompt opens type ipconfig /displaydns and press Enter.
4. You can now copy-paste the websites into Chrome whose history you want to keep and they’ll be saved again.

Wrapping Up

If you have been able to successfully recover the deleted history in Google Chrome, do let us know which of the above methods helped you out. We’d also urge you to share this information with someone who might be in the same situation as you were. For more such content, keep reading WeTheGeek. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Flipboard, and Pinterest.